


now also thou shalt be withered like a tree

by Missy



Category: Jesus Christ Superstar - All Media Types, Jesus Christ Superstar - Webber/Rice
Genre: Angst, Canonical Suicide Attempt, Clean Slates, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Leaps of Faith, Mid-Canon, Multi, Post-Canon, Time Loop, Time Loop - Breaking the loop requires a heavy sacrifice, Time Loop - Looping Character Keeps Dying, Time Travel, Time Traveler is Trying to Fix Something They Previously Broke, resolved angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28929525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Judas demands another chance from God to save his only son, even though He has another plan.And Jesus is unknowing -  afraid, filled with love, filled with certainty, and filled with fear.What comes between the lines is what will change the world for them both forever after.
Relationships: Jesus Christ & Judas Iscariot, Jesus Christ/Judas Iscariot, Jesus Christ/Mary Magdalene, Mary Magdalane & Judas Iscariot, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2020





	now also thou shalt be withered like a tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



> "…behold, now also thou shalt be withered like a tree, and shalt not bear leaves, neither root, nor fruit." (The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, III:2)

Judas pressed his palms flat to the crotch of the fig tree. He had travelled for days to get back to it – the one Jesus had cursed so many months before. Then he pressed his forehead to the gnarled bark and breathed, carefully and slowly, in the rotting sweet scent of the moldering bark.

 _The redemption of humanity versus your petty concerns, Judas,_ he thought to himself. _Is it any wonder He won’t listen to you?_

But he prayed in a way he’d never prayed before. Less for his own redemption than a chance at saving Him.

_Send me back to whence I sinned!_

He did not know that the howled demand, the outrage, aloud until he slid to the ground and fell into a frustrated sleep.

*** 

He woke up on a warm stone floor with the sound of Mary singing in the distance stuffing his ears beyond bearing. He knew the time and the place, and suddenly what must occur – it was before the supper. He would not seek out the the Pharisees. He would not take the silver. He would not betray Jesus.

God would have to find another tool to redeem all of mankind with.

*** 

He did, of course. The first time it was Peter, whose loose lips had doomed Jesus before. Judas fought him bitterly with fists and words as Jesus was Crucified, and when they tumbled off the side of an arid, sunbaked cliff Judas woke again in the temple, listening to Mary’s lonely song.

Mary. Why had he hated her so very much, fear what her presence meant to Jesus’ influence upon the supplicants? She, among them, had the purest beliefs, even if her body had done unholy things.

So he sought her out, looked to her as an ally. They sat up the night, waiting to see who would take Judas’ place with the Pharisees. They caught Paul on a horse, and bound his wrist. In joy, they celebrated.

Jesus caught them embracing. 

They were cast out of his keeping days before he walked into the desert alone – and they followed. Crying for water, they were lost among the dunes.

*** 

Again, the temple floor kissed his bare feet. This time, he vowed to do nothing – interfere not, but not to act. And the supper passed in a drunken haze. No officers arrived to arrest Jesus. He continued to preach, taking them eastward, beyond the reach of grasping hands of the wicked, the impure. 

He shrove Mary and they were united in marriage. They had children, a boy and a girl. The other apostles sprawled out across the land, to write Jesus’ gospels – to preach in their own temples, to their own people. Judas, too, found a warm embrace here – a sense of purpose as a preacher of the word of God, even as his voice shivered with the telling.

But something was not right. Judas could feel it in his treacherous bones. He had done nothing, everything had changed – but God still wanted the fulfillment of the covenant. He could not have given up on the idea so easily.

The earth began to burn soon afterward. Tree after tree caught alight under the scorching sun. 

In the middle of the conflagration, he found Jesus, fighting for the lives of his people, when all Judas wanted to do was run until he found cool water, sanctity. 

“I know all you have done for me, Judas,” said Jesus. The fear in him was incredible – Judas could feel the wet of his hands and the way his whole frame trembled as they embraced. “My Father sees all. He understands all.” 

This time, Jesus kissed him. It was a gentle, soft gesture – lips pressed to lips, dry and cracked. “You must do what you have come to do,” he hissed in Judas’ ear. “We will be reunited in heaven.”

“No!”

“You must!” Jesus begged. “There is no way out of the agony for either of us until we obey my father!”

“Betrayers don’t go to your father’s heaven,” snapped Judas.

“He’s told me to be still,” Jesus said. “And to trust.”

Judas had no idea if that was true. He had no idea if the right thing – the thing he’d tried so hard to prevent – was what really needed to happen. But the flames licked closer and they embraced like lovers, and the stone caressed his feet once more.

*** 

Rejecting the silver in the end was easy. Doing what Jesus wanted him to do was harder than it had been the first time, when he hadn’t known the true cost of the day. Even as they rolled the stone over the open wound that was Jesus’ tomb, he held doubts. But this time he did not falter. 

He was not stoned, he did not jump, and he did not find a rope. He lived on, at a distance, keeping himself miles away, and living off the land. But he returned with Mary on the appointed date.

They rolled aside the stone.

The body was gone.

***

For a moment, he saw Jesus standing in the milky thin light of dawn – risen and rising, and yet still he found Judas’ borrowed bed.

“I do not know what happens next,” Jesus confessed. The fear in his lovely eyes made Judas’ stomach twist, but gladness still filled the space between them.

“And you think I do?” Judas asked, head tilted.

Jesus gave him one of those sad smiles of his; eyes wet jewels, fallen chunks of sky. “I have lived a thousand lives thanks to you – and I’ll live many more, at my father’s right hand. I will see you again – but now that the promise has been fulfilled, you must go on and live a life worthy of your own ideals. Meet me in paradise. I will wait for you there.”

One kiss more – not a tainted embrace, not an evil thought – and he was gone, leaving behind the scent of sun-baked sand and water lapping at a new shore.


End file.
